Hidden Talent Pool in Plain Sight: Corporate America wants you—for nonlegal roles
Neil Handwerker. (Photo by JWHeadshots.com)
Management consulting firms and Big Four accounting firms have a secret weapon. It’s not particularly well-camouflaged. It’s there for anyone who bothers to look. Both of these thought leaders hire lawyers for a wide variety of nonlegal jobs. And they’ve been doing so for decades—everything from business development to crisis management to marketing.
Neither advertises this fact. At least not as a broad statement: “Now hiring! Lawyers for nonpracticing roles!” Instead, way down in the job description under ‘requirements’ or ‘qualifications’ on certain jobs can be found the words “JD preferred” or “JD considered.”
Corporate America is just starting to wake up when it comes to hiring JDs for nonlegal jobs (with the exception of the compliance category, where lawyers always have been traditionally hired).
This is somewhat surprising in that more than 70 of the Fortune 500 chief human resources officers have law degrees, and that the senior ranks of HR departments of many large companies have lawyers in nonpracticing roles. If they don’t know how versatile that a law degree is, who does? And, anecdotally, how many times do we look at the bio of a successful businessperson and see those two letters “JD”?
What has been missing is any kind of organized movement drawing attention to the fact that lawyers can be found having nonlegal jobs of seemingly every variety at organizations of every size and stripe. And, realizing this, talent executives should be actively seeking to hire lawyers for open nonlegal jobs where they’d never thought of them in the past.
This is why my partner, Kimberly Fine, and I launched Ex Judicata: To make the HR universe aware and, at the same time, making lawyers aware that they have a terrific skill set that can set them up for success in myriad careers. Practicing law is only one of them. It is a two-sided marketplace in the best sense.
In a recent interview, Kellye Testy, the executive director and CEO of the Association of American Law Schools, said: “A JD is a degree in complex problem solving. And if there is one thing every employer needs, it is complex problem solvers.”
It is all about the JD skill set
It is widely accepted that lawyers are among the smartest workers on the planet, manifested in litigating cases, putting business deals together, drafting legislation, ensuring regulatory compliance, righting wrongs and other outcomes that we typically associate lawyers with. The foundation for all this is what is learned in law school. It is the JD skill set that includes:
- Analytical thinking
- Issue spotting
- Risk assessment
- Delivering under pressure
- Superb oral, written and presentation skills
- Driven to exceed expectations
- Laser focus on goal attainment
Take a step back, look at this list and then see whether you can think of any career that wouldn’t benefit from someone who possesses these abilities.
The question we are asked most often at Ex Judicata is: “What else can I do with my degree other than practicing law?”
Patricia Roberts, the dean of St. Mary’s School of Law in Texas, said: “What can you do with a law degree? The sky’s the limit. We get so many skills from a legal education. Your communication skills are improved orally and in writing. You understand judgment. Your persuasion, your ability to isolate problems, to issue spot, to solve problems becomes honed so much that some of your family members will say, ‘Enough, I just want you to listen, not solve my problems!’ The way that we’re able to see solutions and see different pathways, no matter what problem is thrown at us, is just still unmatched in any other kind of education. I think no matter what the field, all those skills are what employers want to see in their top performers and leaders.”
Positioning yourself to get a nonlegal job: What is your elevator pitch?
If you ask 100 attorneys who successfully transitioned to careers in business how they did it, you’ll likely get 100 different answers. But if you looked closely, you’d almost certainly see one commonality: To get that first job triggering their new career, they all had a story. Simple. Straightforward. But they had to have it down cold. A story in answer to the two questions every interviewer will ask you: “Why are you leaving the law?” which is followed by, “Why you are a fit for this job?”
Get past that, and you have an unlimited runway. It’s really a formula. Basic, but it works pretty much every time. You start with a sincere explanation of why you are ready, willing and able to leave the practice of law. You then tick off some of your successes as a lawyer. The flow is: “I was successful as a law student; I was successful as a lawyer; and now I firmly believe I will be successful at this position at XYZ corporation.”
Now, you tie in the value of the JD skill set. You explain what it is (the list above), and match the elements to the requirements of the job that you are interviewing for. A simple example: You are applying for a sales position and emphasize what you learned as a litigator influencing opinions and selling a story.
The perfect storm
More and more practicing lawyers and 3Ls are leaving law for alternative careers. The reasons are as long as your arm: relentless pressure, impossible deadlines, working in silos be it at the home or the office, no sense of mission or group purpose, return-to-office mandates, associate layoffs, the adversarial nature of many kinds of practice and more. An acceleration can be traced to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lawyers, perhaps the least reflective of all professionals, suddenly had time to think: Is this what I want to do for the rest of my life?
And the percentage of lawyers leaving the practice is only going to increase as the working world is now more transparent than it has ever been, with more and more options appearing. Law schools report that more students than ever are taking a gap year before starting, during which they are experiencing other occupations firsthand. And before you ask, artificial intelligence is predicted to make an impact, with fewer and fewer junior associates needed in law firms.
Fortunately, while all this is happening, the demographics strongly favor Corporate America looking to JDs to fill nonlegal jobs. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports about hearing every day from member companies—of every size and industry, across nearly every state—“that they’re facing unprecedented challenges trying to find enough workers to fill open jobs.”
As of June, the latest data shows that we have 8.1 million job openings in the U.S. but only 6.8 million unemployed workers.
The demographic “enrollment cliff” will experience a dramatic decrease in the college-age population starting in 2025.
Over the next four years, colleges will lose 576,000 students, according to a January 2023 article from BestColleges.com. There will then be fewer college graduates to fill professional roles, positions where the JD skill set would fit.
Lawyers should be at the ready. Corporate America is going to need an awful lot of complex problem solvers.
Neil Handwerker is the CEO and a co-founder of Ex Judicata, a startup company helping lawyers who want to leave the legal industry find new careers while also helping those lawyers already in nonpracticing roles find even better positions.
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